Authors: James Dixon
Taking another quick look out the window, Davis turned to him and with all sincerity explained, “I’ll tell you what I want you to believe . . . what you must believe. Your name has been forwarded to the authorities. There are certain people assigned to this program. They have been notified that there’s a reasonable expectation that you will give birth to . . .”
“Don’t say it,” said Eugene.
Jody gasped. Her hands came up, covering her face. “Oh, my God! Oh, no, please!”
Eugene held her close, supporting her, and brought her back to the couch. “Sit down,” he pleaded.
“Oh, Gene,” she sobbed. “Gene, he’s telling the truth. I know he’s telling the truth! Oh, God, no!”
Eugene was furious. “You miserable bastard!” he roared at Davis, trying to get up. “Look what you’ve done to her!”
“Gene, no,” Jody screamed, holding on to him, “You’ve got to listen to him, Gene, please!”
Frank moved a step or two closer, his heart going out to this beautiful young woman, but at the same time kept his distance from the maddened Eugene Scott. “I went through this myself,” said Frank. “I know exactly how you feel. I was the first. If it
is
one of these children, it’ll come early, unexpectedly. They’re prepared for that. The team arrived the day before yesterday.”
“What team?” Eugene snapped.
“Specialists,” Frank answered, gazing toward the window. “They have specialists trained, ready for this sort of thing.”
Eugene followed Frank Davis’s gaze. “Are you trying to tell me that people—specialists, as you call them—have come down here for the specific purpose of killing our baby?”
“If it’s like mine when it’s born,” Frank answered, “. . . yes.”
“Davis, you’re out of your goddamn mind!” said Eugene, getting to his feet.
Davis ignored this remark. He moved back again, toward the window. “I don’t have much time,” he said. At the window, he again peered out into the street. “There’s a man named Mallory across the street. He’s watching this house. It’s just like a job to them; they change shifts every eight hours. All except Mallory. He’s always there, it seems.”
Eugene, not believing any of this, moved quickly across the room to see.
“No, he’ll see you,” Frank warned. “Is there another window?”
“Over there,” said Jody, pointing to a smaller window that sat on an angle to the street.
“Perfect,” said Davis, moving to that window, Eugene and Jody joining him.
Outside, it was almost dark. There was a late-model station wagon, a big one, a Chrysler or a Buick, parked across the street. A cold-looking man in a short-sleeved shirt, impervious to the night air, stood by the car, his arms crossed, making no pretense about it. Whatever he was doing out there, one thing was clear: it had to do with their house.
“That’s him,” said Frank. “That’s Mallory.”
Eugene sighed. Convinced before that this Davis was crazy, one thing was certain to him now: that man across the street, whoever he was, was watching his house. “I saw them earlier. I thought they were surveying, or something,” he said. “I thought they were going to build something.”
“And Dr. Fairchild’s part of all this?” Jody asked, still not able to grasp the situation fully.
“Yes.” Frank nodded slowly.
“Oh, God,” said Jody, going back toward the couch. Eugene and Frank followed her. Eugene turned to Frank as they went.
“These men, they know you?” he asked.
“They know me,” said Davis. “But they don’t know I’m in Tucson. I came in here with the other guests for the shower. I don’t think they recognized me.”
After seating Jody on the couch, Eugene asked Davis, his lawyer’s mind racing, “How many are there on this team, would you say?”
“Four of them,” Frank answered.
“You know where they’re staying?”
“At the Sunset Inn. That’s the closest place to the hospital.”
“They know our hospital, too?” questioned Eugene.
“Mr. Scott,” said Frank, “they know it all. They even know you’re an attorney, which might complicate things, as far as the law is concerned. They took all that into consideration, and they still know one other thing: they’re still going to do it.”
Eugene sighed. Suddenly he crossed the room to the bar. Davis, sensing that Scott wanted to talk to him alone, followed.
At the bar, Eugene poured himself a straight vodka, and as Davis joined him, he asked, “You want one?”
Frank shook his head.
Eugene then picked up his drink, at least two fingers, and downed it in one full gulp. Finished, he whirled angrily back at Davis. “If it’s going to be a monster, why not kill it? Why save it, for Christ’s sake?”
Frank answered calmly, academically. He and others had thought this all out; they knew the answer, and the reason why.
“Everyone uses that word so easily, Mr. Scott. ‘Monster.’ It’s even in the textbooks. The new medical textbooks they’re putting out have a section on the Davis Monster Syndrome. Syndrome, they call it, as if it were a disease, because it’s different.”
Jody, refusing to be left out, had come up behind them. Vaguely, she asked, “They didn’t show any pictures of your baby in that magazine I read. What did it look like?”
“Honey, please,” said Eugene, not at all approving of the way this discussion was going. Next Davis would be taking snapshots out of his wallet, passing them around. He looked at Davis. “How many people did it murder?”
Frank returned his look. “Murder?” he asked. “Mr. Scott, you above all, as a lawyer, should know the definition of murder. In the delivery room they tried to suffocate it, and it fought back.”
“You know that for a fact?” questioned Jody, inching closer.
“I know it,” Frank replied. “I’ve asked people, different people. It’s pretty well documented they tried to kill it as soon as it was born.” Frank stopped, then he began to cry, softly at first, trying to control himself.
“I’m sorry,” said Jody, moving even closer, her heart going out to this man.
“It found us,” Frank sobbed. “It came to me for protection and I . . . I shot it. Because they told me to. What did I know? They told me it was a monster. I shot my own child.”
“Please, Mr. Davis,” said Eugene, seeing how much he was upsetting Jody.
But Davis continued. “But he forgave me. Is that an animal? Is that a monster that can forgive? Is it?” he asked, looking at Eugene.
“No . . . I suppose not,” Eugene agreed, saying anything to quiet him.
Frank paused a moment, calmer now. He wiped his wet face with his handkerchief. “We cooperated with the authorities, you know. Oh, we were the perfect little citizens. After all, they made us feel so guilty. So my wife and I let them take tests. You wouldn’t believe it. Test after test.” He smiled, the first time the Scotts had seen him really smile. “They even had tests for the tests . . . So now, now they trust us.”
“Have you done this before?” Eugene asked. “I mean, gone to other people like us?”
“There was a woman in Evanston, Illinois,” Frank said, in complete control of himself again. “I found out too late. I got as far as Chicago. I tried to reach her by phone. I didn’t give my name—that would have blown my cover, as they say. She hung up on me. It was too late anyway . . . the team . . .” He pointed toward the window. “Mallory was already there. They were prepared in the delivery room. They snuffed out its life, killed it.”
“But you told us your name . . .” Eugene said skeptically.
“Yes,” said Frank. “After that I made up my mind. The next time I had information, the next time I had a chance to save one of these . . .”—almost afraid to use the word—“. . . babies, I would do anything or say anything to save it.”
Eugene asked, very logically, “And how do you get the information, Mr. Davis?”
“Friends,” answered Davis, “people who have infiltrated the organization. People who feel the same as we do and are interested in saving these poor creatures.”
Jody, her mind on another track, asked “Was it one of those?”
Frank turned to her. “Excuse me?”
“The baby in Evanston.”
“Oh, yes,” said Frank. “Yes, it was one of those . . . There have been two false alarms, two mistakes, but somehow”—he looked at Jody—“I sense this isn’t a mistake. May I”—he paused:—“touch it?”
“Yes,” said Jody, not waiting for her husband’s approval, “yes, you may.”
Frank moved closer to her. Jody stood there waiting, as if this strange man might have some healing power deep within him. Frank placed his hand on her belly as Eugene looked on, stunned by all of this into an almost comatose state. He heard Davis say:
“I feel it. As soon as I came inside the house, I felt it. It was the same feeling I got when I knew my son was close by.”
Jody looked at him as if everything were decided, everything determined. “They don’t know the cause, do they?”
“No,” answered Frank. “Some of us believe it’s the next step forward in evolution. A world in which the human race can survive the pollution of this planet.”
“But not the human race,” said Eugene, listening carefully, picking up Davis’s every word. “Not the human race as we know it. These . . .”—searching for the right word—“. . . creatures . . .”
“Don’t be afraid to call them that.” Frank smiled, his eyes glazed, as if he were describing some higher calling, some secret cult. “You probably won’t be able to help it, until you see yours and recognize yourself in it.” He turned to Eugene. “I hope you have that opportunity, Mr. Scott. A few of us have. It makes us very remarkable in our own way.”
Eugene felt very peculiar with that strange man smiling at him. This man he had not known a half-hour, who now stood in his living room with that ingenuous smile that never quite worked, telling him things, impossible things, that would shape the rest of his life.
All Eugene wanted now was to get Davis out of his house so that he could be alone with his wife, his beautiful, exquisite Jody, who now stood there, her life, too, a shambles before her.
Eugene motioned toward the window. “You’d better leave.”
“Oh, yes,” said Frank, suddenly remembering the danger outside. “Is there a back way?”
Eugene, only too willing to oblige, motioned toward the breakfast room that led to a back door. “This way,” he said.
Frank paused, went to Jody, took her hand. “Goodbye, Mrs. Scott.”
“Good-bye,” she said. She looked straight at Frank Davis as if some secret bond linked them. Eugene stood by, powerless to do anything about it.
Jody watched as her husband led the way through the small breakfast room and out the back door.
Eugene Scott brought Frank quickly across the well-cared-for back yard. Reaching the gate, he stopped to open it. Frank, beside him, was telling him tensely, “Don’t try to reach me. I’ll be in touch. Go to your office tomorrow. Don’t do anything to break the routine.”
Eugene looked at him: a man obsessed. “Listen, Mr. Davis, you know I really don’t think I can believe any of this.”
“Mr. Scott,” replied Frank, “two years ago, if someone had come to my door, I’d have been the same way. Who could believe such a thing? But it happened, and it’s going to happen to a lot more people. Maybe thousands, maybe millions, before this century is over.”
At a back window, Jody watched her husband and Davis at the back fence. She could only imagine what they were talking about, things in all likelihood they did not want her to hear. She looked down. She saw her huge belly, resting against the sill of the window. Tenderly she rubbed it. “Oh, please. Please, God, no!” she murmured.
She looked up. Frank Davis was gone. Eugene was coming toward her, back across the yard. “Oh, no,” she whispered, “he can’t see me like this.” She had to do something to look busy. Crazily she thought, If I’m busy all this will go away. It will all become a bad dream.
Quickly she moved into the living room. The presents! She saw the presents, scattered all over the floor. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll get busy with the presents, she thought; then nothing will be wrong, everything will be as it was.
That was how Eugene found her, kneeling on their soft, thick carpet, picking up the gifts; all those lovely gifts she had received that day. Tiny sweaters for the baby; a little jumper suit to bring the baby home in from the hospital; fancy, intricate little bibs; one tiny, lovely little thing after another.
As she held those things in her hands, folding them carefully, she began to cry, burying her face in the soft material of the baby clothing.
Eugene went to her noiselessly across the soft carpet.
“Jody, Jody . . .”
He knelt beside her. He held her awkwardly, the packages between them.
“Honey, don’t,” he whispered.
“Did he tell you what it looked like?” she sobbed.
“No, honey, no.”
“Half an hour ago,” she said, “we were having a party. And now, all of a sudden, we’ve accepted the fact that our baby’s not going to be normal, that somebody’s going to try and kill it.”
“Honey,” Eugene protested, “I haven’t accepted anything.”
“Yes, you have,” she said. She looked at him with blazing clarity. “You know who this man is, what he has gone through. Why else would he be here?”
Eugene had no answer for her . . . none.
Jody continued. “Now we’re part of some conspiracy to save our own child. How can that be? In less time than it would take to eat lunch, how can we talk logically about something that isn’t possible?”
“It’s like an accident, honey,” said Eugene, “like any accident that happens to you. A car jumping the divider, a plane crashing into your house—sure, it happens fast. People are alive one minute, and the next they’re not. That’s how it is.”
“I feel exactly as I did when they called me up. Remember when Mom called me up when Dad died of the heart attack?” Jody asked.
Eugene nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“That’s how I feel. It takes forever to plan a life and only a second for everything to fall apart. Damn it,” she said. She took her beautiful artist’s hands, and rolling them into an unaccustomed fist, banged them over and over again into the floor. “Why us?” she cried. “Why us?”
And then it was night. Only a few lights were on in the upstairs level of the Scotts’ house. The station wagon was still there, across the street from the house; the man was still there, too, leaning against the side of the car, keeping his constant, unholy vigil.